Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Friends of the Earth are the Enemies of Mankind

Back to the past with Friends of the Earth

By Alan
Caruba

It’s such
a benign sounding name, Friends of the Earth. This multi-million dollar international
organization is a network of environmental organizations in 74 countries. If
its agenda was adopted and enacted much of mankind would lose access to the
energy sources that define and enhance modernity or the beneficial chemicals
that protect food crops from insect predators and weeds.

I am on
FOE’s mailing list and the most recent email informed me and the thousands of
others who received it that “the oil lobby and the Republican leadership in
Congress are plotting a full frontal assault on our environmental protections…”
I bet you didn’t know that the Republican Party was an enemy of the
environment. That’s curious because it was a Republican, Richard M. Nixon, who
created the Environmental Protection Agency with an executive order!

FOE was
upset by the $1.01 trillion bill to fund the U.S. government for the coming
year through to September. “What’s more, in a surprise giveaway to the
super-rich, the bill raised the maximum contribution limit from individuals to
political parties—opening the door for billionaires like the Koch Brothers to
purchase even more seats in government.”

The sheer
hypocrisy of FOE defies the imagination. No mention was made of the secretive
“billionaires club” that was revealed in August in a report by Republicans on
the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. It was titled “The Chain of
Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations
Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA.”Didn’t read about it in the mainstream press?
That’s because it was hushed up.

You may,
however, have heard of San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer who in February
pledged to spend up to $100 million, half his own money and half from other
billionaire donors, to get candidates who promised to pass anti-global warming
legislation elected in the midterm elections. Steyer has been a leading opponent
of the Keystone XL pipeline, but for sheer hypocrisy, Steyer made his fortune
by investing in fossil fuel companies!

As far as
FOE is concerned, only conservative billionaires are evil.

“At
Friends of the Earth, we’re working to protect people and the planet from Big
Oil and its profits.” Translation: We don’t want oil companies to provide the
source of energy that fuels our cars, trucks, and other devices that improve
our lives. We don’t like profits because they are the result of capitalism.”

For good
measure, FOE tells its supporters the “future would
be great for companies like Dow, Syngenta, and Monsanto -- but terrible for
bees, butterflies, and people like us. Take away pesticides and all you have
left are the pest insects that spread disease and harm food crops.

According
to Wikipedia, “Originally based largely in North America and Europe, its
membership is now heavily weighted toward groups in the developing world.” It’s
the developing world that has been the focus of the United Nations greatest
hoax, global warming, now called climate change, as a means to transfer money
from wealthy nations to those less well governed, often because there is a
despot or larcenous group in charge.

It is
little wonder that FOE is upset by the decision of millions of American voters
to elect candidates who want to rein in the excesses of the Environmental
Protection Agency and take steps to improve the economy. Senate Majority
Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is denounced as “a climate denier with close
ties to the coal industry.”He has made
it clear that getting the Keystone XL pipeline approved by Congress will be a
priority.

FOE’s
email even named the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as “a policy
group that helps develop anti-environmental state laws across the country.
Right now they’re focused on plans to erode the President’s Clean Power Plan
and EPA’s ability to carry out its mission.”

What FOE’s
email decrying Big Oil and Republicans doesn’t mention is that, among the elements
of the 1,603 pages of the omnibus appropriations bill, is a reduction in the
funding of the Environmental Protection Agency which received $60 million less
than last year. At $8.1 billion, the EPA is operating on its smallest budget
since 1989.

I would
like to see the EPA eliminated as a federal agency and that funding go as
grants to the individual state environmental protection agencies to address
problems closer to those responsible to do so. As it was, the omnibus bill put
a variety of limits on EPA “greenhouse gas” programs, some of which verge on
the totally idiotic such as permits for gas emissions—methane from cows!

The bill
also disallowed President Obama’s promise to give $3 billion to the United
Nations Climate Fund, a means to take our money and give it to nations for
“environmental” programs that are more likely to end up being something else
entirely.

With its
anti-energy, anti-capitalism agenda, Friends of the Earth are in fact enemies
of mankind. They would happily return the planet to the Dark Ages. That’s why
people like me shine a very bright light on them so you will not be duped in
the way far too many others are.

When I worked for 'Big Oil' we observed that, as you point out, FoE campaign by omission of information.Greenpeace however actually made things up, its was called lying.Perhaps you could check out Greenpeace and do a short blog on whether that is still true.Incidentally, in the UK at least, FoE has gone that way as well, for example the dismantling of 'toxic' US ships in NE England.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.